Starboy

Wow, you do lead the life of a contorted mind. So unless I murder everybody I am not a murderer?

Seebs, believe in supernaturalism if you want to but be honest with yourself, accept it. You are a supernaturalist.

Starboy

seebs

Ahh, so a "metaphysical naturalist" isn't someone who believes *everything* to be the natural world, but only someone who believes at least one thing is natural?

Huh. That's not what *I* always heard.

Look at the example you gave about "demon possessed cars". The philosophy you were discussing was clearly the one I was pointing out was not generally the philosophy of people who accept some supernatural things.

If you say "supernaturalism is silly because people shouldn't believe cars are possessed by demons", you have to grant that you're pushing for a pretty extreme concept of supernaturalism.

seebs

See? Here you are asserting that a supernaturalist accepts supernatural explanations all the time no matter what.

If you want to claim that that's not how you're using the word, you probably ought to retract this one.

Starboy

seebs, that is the interesting thing about you. You are a naturalist and a supernaturalist both at the same time. From where I sit it looks like you have constructed a chinese wall around your religion to protect it from reality. Its kinda funny when you think about it.

Starboy

seebs

Yeah, it's very odd. Sorta like how some people will use different standards of proof for mathematics and science, or will choose friends based on entirely nonscientific criteria.

I use different tools for different jobs. I am not dogmatic. You're the one with the One True Method dogma, here. That's why I keep describing you as "religious"; you have the One True Method of approaching the world, and you can't understand why people would mix them.

Stephen T-B

Surely the point of being a supernaturalist is NOT circumscribing the interface between the Natural and the Supernatural: the supernatural wouldn’t be supernatural if were subject to any laws our minds might attempt to impose on it, so demon-possessed cars are no sillier or more improbable than fairies or the existence of hell or the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection or a talking donkey.
If the Natural and the Supernatural overlap, then they must be expected to overlap any where, any way and any time.
Picking and choosing which bit of the supernatuiral is more acceptabler because it seems more "rational" than another bit is a non-existent option.

seebs

Obviously it exists, because people take it all the time. Perhaps you want to say it's inconsistent, but it's only inconsistent with your assertion "not subject to any laws". I don't personally believe this to be true, and most people I know don't.

Not subject to *the same* laws isn't the same as not subject to *any* laws.

Starboy

seebs, another fine example of first century thinking. People talk about santa clause and the tooth fairy. So what. In the twenty first century there must be evidence to support the claim. The evidence must be verified, otherwise it is just talk. But for a first century mind, talk is all that is needed. That makes it "true".

Starboy

seebs

You seem to have misunderstood. Someone said an option didn't exist; I observed that there are a number of people who have picked that option. Obviously, the option exists.

This doesn't make their beliefs true, but it shows that such a belief is possible, and is one of the choices open to people thinking about belief systems.

Stephen T-B

A “non-existent option,” was a sloppy phrase, and you are right, Seebs, to knock it down.
I now think that a “false” option is a better way to describe it - or better still - delusional. And for the reasons I gave i.e. because every belief in the supernatural is a dislocation from everything we know about the physical universe. Once that has occurred, there is no anchorage in solid reality, so what the Raelians believe is neither more nor less daft than the beliefs of Heaven’s Gate, the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Roman Catholic Church, the Zoroastrians or Southern Baptists.

If you read my previous post again you will see that I did not, in fact, suggest that the supernatural is not subject to any laws; it is not subject, I suggested, to any laws “our minds might attempt to impose on it.”